March sees surge in new vehicle registration

New registration of motor vehicles rose substantially, by 78.6 percent year-on-year, to 1,665 in March, with that of heavy motorcycles (1,034) soaring by 88 percent.

According to the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), given a notable decrease in January, new registration of motor vehicles in the first quarter of 2017 dropped by 5.8 percent year-on-year to 3,762.

Statistics from the end of March 2017 show that the total number of licensed motor vehicles was 245,310, down by 1.4% year-on-year; the number of motorcycles (127,327) and light automobiles (110,184) decreased by 1.7 percent and 1.6 percent respectively.

There were 1,181 cases of traffic accidents in March and the number of casualties resulting from these accidents was 366. In the first quarter of 2017, the number of traffic accidents decreased by 7.6% year-on-year to 3,578 cases, resulting in 1,118 casualties with 3 of them being fatalities.

The data released by DSEC indicates that cross-border vehicle traffic totaled 413,413 trips in March 2017, down by 4.5 percent year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2017, cross-border vehicle traffic decreased by 6.6 percent year-on-year to 1,175,351 trips, vehicle traffic through the Border Gate dropped by 12.2 percent while that through the checkpoint of Cotai rose by 12.4 percent.

Commercial flight movements at the Macau International Airport totaled 4,448 in March 2017, down by 1.5 percent year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2017, commercial flight movements decreased by 5.9 percent year-on-year to 12,907. Flights to and from mainland China, Thailand and Taiwan dropped by 1.2 percent, 27.1 percent and 15.9 percent respectively, while flights to and from the Republic of Korea surged by 48.2 percent. Helicopter flight movements between Macau and mainland China and between Macau and Hong Kong soared by 50.8 percent year-on-year to 950 in March, and movements in the first quarter rose by 31.5 percent to 3,119.

Q1: air cargo volume increased by 7.9pct

Macau’s air cargo increased by 7.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter to 7,732 tonnes. Of this figure, outward cargo (4,783 tons) and transit cargo (1,623 tons), rose by 14.7 percent and 6.3 percent respectively. Despite the increase, inward cargo (1,326 tons) dropped by 9.8 percent in the first quarter. According to DSEC, gross weight of seaborne container cargo decreased by 9.0 percent year-on-year to 43,303 tons, seaborne container throughput (30,381 twenty-foot equivalent unit) and containers handled (21,162) went down by 3.8 percent and 0.7 percent respectively.